‘I didn’t want to be a statistic’: Black males, urban schooling, and educational urgency

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing upon resilience and educational urgency, this longitudinal study explores the narratives of 20 college-aged Black males as they make sense of their secondary school experiences at Marcus Garvey Academy (pseudonym), an all-boys public school in a large urban city in the U.S. In paying particular attention to some of the challenges they faced, findings indicate that a complex set of personal, family, peer, and school factors affect these students’ lives during their secondary school years. In their efforts to overcome these difficulties, students scripted resistance into their self-concept, identified ways that they benefitted from a supportive schooling environment, and translated some of their self-learning into educational urgency. These students’ experiences and meaning making serve as a critical counternarrative to how they are stereotyped and limited by deficit framing and lowered expectations and speak powerfully to ways to better theorize, understand, and appreciate Black males’ schooling experiences, resistance efforts, and aspirations.